


Flower

by Saeto15



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saeto15/pseuds/Saeto15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternia has all sorts of flora and fauna that are out to get you.  How easy would it be to not notice something was wrong with you until it was too late?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You’re coming up on your eighth sweep when you finally notice something’s different. You’ve been too busy flipping your shit all over your friends, your mood alternating so fast it would make Sollux’s head spin. Ascension is near and you have no idea what to do about it, and you’ve made damn well sure your entire Trollian list is aware of that fact.

You’re in the middle of typing a reply to Sollux, peppered with the usual ragegasm of ‘fucks’, when you just… stop. The anger just seeps out of you, like someone flipped a switch in your pan and turned it off. It leaves you feeling oddly empty. You stare at your husktop’s screen for what seems like hours while the Trollian window flashes with Captor’s replies, but none of it really matters anymore. Your head feels funny. Not unpleasant, just funny.

You finally manage to focus on the window, angry lines of mustard yellow assaulting your eyes. It’s been twenty minutes since your last response.

TA: 2o what are you goiing two do kk  
TA: you have two actually come up wiith 2omethiing 2ooner or later  
TA: what are you iignoriing me now  
TA: kk  
TA: KK  
TA: wow way two go kk even ed would be more mature than thii2 ii never thought iid 2ee the day

It should piss you off. You should have started hammering at the keyboard, informing Sollux Captor that he was a nooksniffing bulgebiter and it’d be a cold day in hell before you’d ever need his help. Instead, you reply-

CG: OKAY

-and close the window entirely. Your skin itches, and you have better things to do right now. As you get up you fail to see the window pop back up as Sollux replies:

TA: waiit what

**

You haven’t opened your husktop in days, but that’s okay. You find yourself wandering your hive, aimless, entering blocks and immediately forgetting why you went there to begin with. You have a vague feeling that you’ve been searching for your lusus. You haven’t heard his grouchy “SKREE” in a while now.

You spend some time in the nutrition block, emptying your thermal hull. You’re ravenous for some reason, and before long you’ve eaten everything even remotely edible in your hive, right down to your lusus’ roe cubes and that ancient, crusty box of baking soda in the hull. It tastes horrible but you eat it anyway and you’re not really sure why.

When you leave the block you fail to notice the large lump in the corner, festooned with flowering branches and stinking like death.

**

Maybe you’re going to molt soon. Your claws have scratched bare patches on your skin from itching so much; even your horns are tingling. For once the sight of your blood fails to disgust you, even as it runs down your forehead from where you’ve been digging at your horn beds. You’ve heard molting is a shitty process, and it figures you’d be the one who had to suffer through it first. 

You leave bloody hand prints on the wall as you stagger down the stairs, once again in search of your lusus. He’s nowhere to be found.

**

You snap out of an oddly dreamless doze. You groan, climbing to your feet. For some reason you don’t hurt. You want badly to go up, so you make your creaky way to the stairs. You can’t walk properly for some reason, so you find yourself crawling on hands and knees, shaking with the effort as you haul your sorry corpse up each step.

It takes hours, but you find it hard to keep track. You’re missing whole chunks of time, anyway. How long has this been going on? How long is molting supposed to take? You don’t know. You don’t remember reading about it. You don’t remember your schoolfeeding, or anything your friends might have mentioned. You don’t remember much of anything right now. The only thing that seems important is getting to the top of your hive, and when you finally reach the landing, you realize you need to go outside as well.

The moons are out. You stagger through the door onto the balcony, your hands out to catch you as you fall. You drag yourself to the edge and flop onto your back. The stars glimmer down at you as your eyes unfocus. You’re coming apart at the seams.

This isn’t right.

**

You break free. You leave the husk of your body behind.


	2. Wither

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’re lucky to be alive, you know that much. 
> 
> You just wish your friends were a little more helpful when you told them you were sprouting mushrooms.

You open your eyes.

The moons are setting. It will be morning soon. You watch for a while, unable to move, your brain churning sluggishly as you attempt to recall exactly why you passed out on your balcony in a puddle of your own blood.

Your fingers are sore. Your horns hurt. You finally manage to roll onto your side, and your abused stomach makes itself known as you vomit up everything you’d eaten in the past night. There’s a lot of half-eaten junk in there, and you vaguely recall emptying out the hull, a ravenous hunger that hadn’t been sated even then. You don’t think you want to eat anything again, at least for a while.  


You push yourself up to your hands and knees, weak as the day you pupated. Your vision is blurry, and you blink a few times to clear it, focusing on your hand. You freeze when you see it.

A thin stalk of _something_ is growing from your hand, in the webbing between your thumb and index finger. It’s pale gold and two inches long and it’s sticking from your hand like you’re growing a sixth finger.  


You recoil in horror and try to claw it off; it snaps away easily, but the stalk was rooted into the flesh. It was growing from you.

**

CG: SOLLUX  
CG: WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU START SPROUTING MUSHROOMS  
TA: what  
TA: are you 2eriiou2ly a2kiing or ii2 thii2 fuck wiith 2ollux niight twoniight  
TA: becau2e you dii2appeared iin the miiddle of our conver2atiion liike eiight hour2 ago  
CG: DO YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD JUST ASK YOU THAT OUT OF NOWHERE? WHO THE FUCK ASKS SUCH AN ODDLY SPECIFIC QUESTION UNLESS THEY REALLY NEED TO KNOW THE ANSWER?  
TA: well two be faiir iit wa2 a pretty 2tupiid que2tiion  
CG: JEGUS I SHOULD HAVE JUST ASKED SOMEONE WHO DIDN’T HAVE THEIR HEAD JAMMED UP THEIR CHUTE AND SAVED MYSELF THE THIRTY SECONDS.

**

You try not to flip your shit as you stagger back into your hive. The sun is peering over the horizon now and you can’t help but wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t woken when you had.

You completely fail at not flipping your shit when you find your lusus in the kitchen, his carapace completely covered in flowering stalks of fungus. It’s growing from his eyes, his claws, the cracks in the joins of his shell. You fight the urge to go to him, to hold his head up and yell at him to wake up. You know that would be a mistake.

**

CG: KANAYA I REALLY NEED YOUR HELP  
CG: MY LUSUS IS DEAD AND I THINK  
CG: FUCK  
CG: I’VE GOT SOME SORT OF INFECTION  
GA: I’m Sorry Karkat You Will Have To Be More Specific  
CG: THERE ARE THINGS GROWING FROM MY SKIN AND MY LUSUS IS THROWING A FUNGUS PARTY IN THE CORNER OF MY NUTRITION BLOCK  
CG: KANAYA  
CG: KANAYA I’M REALLY SCARED RIGHT NOW  
GA: I Think I Know What It Is

**

Your head is actually clearer now. You stare at yourself in the mirror in the ablution block, your skin crawling. You found more stalks growing from your scalp, but they snapped off easily, brittle and crumbling. You feel like shit, but at least you don’t seem to be dying.

You dig out your emergency medikit from beneath the sink, blowing the dust from it. You haven’t actually had to look at it since you fell from the top of the bookcase when you were two sweeps old and broke your arm. Your lusus had followed you everywhere for half a sweep after that, refusing to let you out of his sight.

Fuck.

You’re not crying. You just have dust in your eyes.

You open the kit and paw through it, throwing aside rolls of gauze and crab-covered bandaids. The antibiotics are exactly where you remember them.

**Author's Note:**

> Cordyceps is a genus of fungus that uses arthropods as hosts. The fungus infiltrates the exoskeleton and begins to influence the hosts' behavior. In 'zombie' ants, the insect is forced to climb to the top of a plant stalk and clamp on with its mandibles. The fungus then bursts from the insect's thorax and flowers, sending its spores into the wind.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Spore](https://archiveofourown.org/works/787558) by [ShianneUrami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShianneUrami/pseuds/ShianneUrami)




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